BANGALORE: In an early morning sweep on Wednesday, the CBI raided former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa's residence in Dollar's colony, an upmarket area in Bangalore, and in Shimoga, in connection with his involvement in illegal mining and business transactions.

NEW DELHI: India will for the first time introduce a vaccine against Rubella - a viral disease that infects pregnant women and leads to babies being born with cardiac, cerebral, ophthalmic and auditory defects. The Union health ministry so far believed that the disease, also called German Measles, did not affect Indians. Now, the ministry estimates that around 30,000 abnormal children are being born annually because of Rubella. Many experts, however, say the accurate figure would be around two lakh babies.

Rejecting railway minister Mukul Roy's move to roll back hike in passenger fare, CAG said the way forward for the national transporter is to rationalize both passenger and freight tariffs to tide over the severe financial crunch. The government auditor observed that railways is in the red, and has not been able to meet the escalating cost of operating passenger and other services.

New Delhi: The surge of poaching of rhinoceros in South Africa could lead to threats to the one-horned Indian rhino in Assam and West Bengal if the African country decides to go ahead and demand opening the international trade in rhino horns. Speaking at the first stock taking meeting of the World Bank-led Global Tiger Recovery Programme in Delhi, Keshav Varma, programme director of the Global Tiger Initiative, warned that South Africa, unable to contain poaching, was inclined towards opening the trade in rhino horns.

Noida: Following allegations of a major farmhouse scam in Noida, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, has ordered an investigation into the scheme launched by the Noida Authority in 2009. In a letter addressed to the Noida Authority chairman Rakesh Bahadur, the government has directed him to submit a report within a week. The report will deal mainly on three important points — land acquisition, allotment rate and the procedure of allotment of the farms. The scheme allegedly led to a loss of nearly Rs 300 crore to the state exchequer.

New Delhi: In a fresh twist in the PIL being heard by the Delhi high court on utility of the BRT corridor, another NGO has moved court against scrapping of the project. National Alliance of People’s Movement, an umbrella organization has sought to be heard as a party to the PIL where HC has ordered a review of the utility of the corridor. Arguing against any move to scrap it, the NGO is likely to field rights lawyer Prashant Bhushan to make their case for retaining the corridor, arguing in essence that it serves the needs of the masses that use public transport.

Tokyo: The assembly in a western Japanese town that hosts a nuclear plant agreed on Monday it was necessary to restart two off-line reactors, its chairman said, the first such nod since all the country’s stations were halted after Fukushima crisis.

India cannot abandon equity. It’s that time of the year again. The developed and developing world are meeting for climate talks – and likely to stumble on fundamental differences. This time, the contentious issue is the EU’s cynical ditching of the Kyoto Protocol and insistence on starting on the draft of a new climate protocol in 2012 itself. India, along with other developing countries, objects to this shifting of goalposts by the EU. It wants the principles of equity as well as common but differentiated responsibilities to be recognised before a new protocol can be drafted.

Encouraged by usage of the provisions of the Right to Information Act, the government has decided to set up a state of-the-art call centre and an interactive website to facilitate easy exchange of information related to the transparency law to citizens. The project was envisaged after taking insights from a government study which highlighted inconvenience faced by citizens in exercising their rights to information.

New Delhi: Food Corporation of India (FCI) has warned that unless the government can distribute 750 lakh tonnes of food grain, there will be no storage space for the bumper harvest being currently procured, the food ministry told Rajya Sabha on Monday. The crisis of plenty has been engaging the government for a while as it is under pressure to distribute food grain to the poor or intervene in some manner to cool inflation, and the FCI alarm provides the clearest indication of the scale of the problem.